StarkNet Roundup #10

Weekly summary of all things StarkNet

gm fellow STARK enthusiasts! ✨🐺

This is the 10th edition of my weekly StarkNet summary. The previous update can be found here. If you enjoy this newsletter, don’t forget to subscribe. It’s free!

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Let’s get into this week’s news! 👇

Protocol & dev tool updates

• StarkNet Alpha v0.8.0 is now live on mainnet, introducing the Fee Mechanism!

  StarkWare @StarkWareLtd

  StarkNet Alpha 0.8.0. Live on Mainnet. ✨

  

  StarkWare @StarkWareLtd

  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…8! ✨ StarkNet Alpha 0.8.0 is live on testnet with an important feature: Fee mechanism. This feature will be optional for the current version, to allow the ecosystem to learn how to implement it. What else is new? Read and learn✨ https://t.co/QVCdjXtiEh

• starknet-devnet v0.1.19 has been released, bringing support for Cairo v0.8.0, among other things.

• Nile v0.5.0 is out! This release adds support for Cairo v0.8.0 as well as updates to the built in Account and Signer module, plus lots of bugfixing.

• Nethermind’s work on a StarkNet Client called Juno is continuing. Github.

• HRF and StarkWareLtd are announcing that their ZK-Rollup Research Fellow will be @lightcoin. He will begin in May. He will share his findings on whether ZK-Rollups can be useful for Bitcoin scaling/privacy with us in August.

• Zock: ZK Proofs in Uqbar by Hocwyn Tipwex.

• A sample implementation of flashloans on StarkNet by tohrnii.

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Media highlights

Incredible outline of Fractal scaling for StarkNet - Slush by SuezBridge.

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What does it mean to build an On-Chain Game on an Ethereum ZK-Rollup? @Swagtimus & @ybs_eth of @matchbox_dao, an Ecosystem DAO supporting on-chain Games on #StarkNet, discuss on the Metacast. Notes here.

ZK-Rollups: Ethereum scaling Layer-2 solution StarkWare - Eli Ben-Sasson interview

Recording of twitter space with imrgoyal (JediSwap) and odin_free (StarkWare), deep dive into StarkNet.

JediSwap @JediSwap

ELI5 to a deep understanding of StarkNet (@StarkWareLtd) with master @imrgoyal and @odin_free Set a reminder below 👇 https://t.co/F2VRuurGS4

Recording of twitter space with ZKPad, about the future of blockchain gaming on StarkNet with @sylvechv, CEO at @briqNFT and @guiltygyoza, grand wizard at @topology_gg.

ZkPad | We're Hiring 👀 @ZKPadfi

L2 Open Mic #1 the 23/03 at 4PM UTC 🚨 We’ll talk about the future of blockchain gaming on StarkNet with @sylvechv CEO at @briqNFT and @guiltygyoza grand wizard at @topology_gg. Don’t miss this one if you want to learn from two great L2 builders 🌟 https://t.co/JHfYVznMGK

MatchboxDAO workshop - starknet.js with 0xsean.

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Ecosystem

• Want to build on StarkNet? Check out this building on StarkNet page.

• Strategy game Eykar showed off some exciting progress updates & a brief teaser.

  Eykar @AgeOfEykar

  Be careful, a lot of things might change, but here is what we are working on 😎

• SerityFinance, a protocol focused on creating and trading yield-backed synthetic assets, received a Dev grant from StarkWare to further develop and launch their products.

• Introducing Curve Zero, a fixed rate loan protocol featuring more efficient pricing mechanisms, built on Starknet.

  CurveZero @curve_zero

  Why CurveZero? Hello World! CurveZero is a fixed rate loan protocol thats being built on Starknet. We have made great progress over the last 6 months, with the Cairo codebase being 60-70% complete. We now want to take some time out to explain the project to the community.

• Introducing Brine.finance - a decentralized orderbook exchange on StarkNet. They just crossed 1,000 registrations for their testnet waitlist.

• MintSquareNFT released an update. You can now make an offer to NFTs that are listed, accept offers made to your NFTs, and view the transaction history of an NFT in the item page.

• StarkSwap is launching on March 31st on the StarkNet alpha testnet.

• Aave <> Starknet integration Phase I Project update - AAVE governance forum.

• Introducing EtherQuest: A new game on StarkNet.

  EtherQuest @ether_quest

  COMING SOON

• briq community member CryptoTrooper built little games around briq NFTs. Check them out and give them a spin. In other news: briq builders have created 46.8k NFTs with briqs in about 3 months.

• Money Market zkLend kicked off their community calls. Recording & notes can be found here.

• Metaverse Game The Ninth drops a YouTube tutorial on how to implement some gaming operations on StarkNet.

• Announcing the first vertical of DeFi platform Alpha Road on StarkNet testnet: A one-click revisited AMM. Website, Testnet Guide. 500 free slots available and more coming soon.

  Alpha Road Finance @alpharoad_fi

  ✨ Announcing the first vertical of Alpha Road on #StarkNet testnet: 𝗔 𝗼𝗻𝗲-𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗠𝗠. Website: testnet.app.alpharoad.fi Testnet Guide: alpharoad.medium.com/testnet-guide-… 500 frees slots available and more coming soon. ⌛Thread 1/4 testnet.app.alpharoad.fi

  

  testnet.app.alpharoad.fiAlpha RoadAn innovative DeFi platform on top of L2 Starknet.

• SithSwap receives a development grant from StarkWare to deliver an advanced stableswap AMM to StarkNet.

• Phi, a Metaverse Digital Land Project on StarkNet launched their first demo on the Goerli TestNet. Have a read and give it a try.

• Asset management protocol Magnety is holding their first community call today.

• Continually updated list of projects building on StarkNet. 🏗️

• Weekly StarkNet stats: 426k txs on Goerli, 4.1k txs on Mainnet. To date: 2.4m txs on Goerli, 75k txs on Mainnet. Contracts deployed last week: 50k on Goerli, 1.6k on Mainnet.

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StarkNet Shamans Highlight

Long-term fractal scaling

We’ve been thinking about how fractal scaling will work once ZK-rollups can build on itself. We first propose a trustless bridging between ZK rollups that does not incur L1 costs (achieved by passing ZK proofs). We also propose a consensus mechanism for rollups that combines the security of each rollup into one common mechanism.

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Useful links & articles

Past week

• StarkNet thesis by Kanna - great introductory read.

• Layer 2 tracker L2Beat shares upcoming plans & roadmaps.

• Deep dive into StarkNet thread by Aylo.

• EIP-4844 would effectively reduce rollup fees by up to 100x- even before danksharding - great explainer thread by pseudotheos. And some more in-depth clarifications by polynya.

• EIP-4844 explainer website with an FAQ section that was written by Vitalik Buterin.

• Argent Engineering is a new Twitter account that dives deeper into the technical details of what Argent is building. Argent’s aim is the mass adoption of self-custody. Smart wallets on zk-rollups make that possible.

• The turkish StarkNet community released an in-depth article about STARKs, written in turkish, by tobbykitty.eth.

• 1-click StarkNet node deployment on any architecture: Raspberry pi 3(armv7), Raspberry pi 4(aarch64) and regular x86 systems by odysseas.eth.

• Weekly recap twitter thread by odin free.

This week

• 5 questions for Briq, by zkRollups.xyz - thread.

• StarkNet Tutorial Thread - How to use the Argent X wallet by Nurstar.eth.

• A recap of what we know so far in terms of tokenomics on StarkNet applications - thread by The Stark Knight.

• Argent is sponsoring 2 devs to go to StarkWare's hackathon: Amsterdam, 25-26 April. If you're early in your career & excited to build on StarkNet, apply.

• Video overview covering the state-machine view of Ethereum, the tension between underlying node hardware and L1 scaling, how gas pricing affects L1 scaling, and then an overview of L2 scaling by Jordan McKinney.

• Big StarkWare overview thread by Thien Nguyen.

• odin free shares some impressive StarkNet statistics.

• Deep dive into NFT marketplace oasis by nurstar.eth.

• 5 tutorials for how to setup your own StarkNet node by odin free.

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Developer resources

Past week

• Cairo Goldmine: A comprehensive, annotated list of 300+ repositories of the StarkNet ecosystem, by abstractnull.

• SymbOnStark releases step 7 of his Cairo tutorial: How to run a StarkNet node with Docker.

• Noteworthy Cairo optimization tips by Bllu.

This week

• Cairo Goldmine: A comprehensive, annotated list of 300+ repositories of the StarkNet ecosystem, by abstractnull, has been updated with more than 15 new repos.

• Great discussion about multisig implementation choices by Lauri Peltonen.

• How do STARKs work? Compilation of resources by Eli Ben-Sasson.

• The Ultimate StarkNet Dev Environment by DrSpacemn.

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Dates and Events

• next community call March 29th: Presentation by MatchboxDAO, roadmap update by StarkNet team.

• Encode x StarkNet hackathon: Feb 28th until April. Here’s a blog post outlining the Hackathon challenges.

• MIT Sloan Blockchain Club is hosting a fireside chat on the future of StarkWare and Zero-Knowledge with Uri Kolodny (Sloan alum '00) this Monday, March 28th.

• The MatchboxDAO team will be hosting a special Matchbox Primitives for Cairo Devs workshop as part of the Encode hackathon on Thursday, March 31st at 4:30 pm GMT+1.

• StarkWare is a sponsor for Layer 2 Amsterdam: April 19th-20th.

• Lightshift StarkNet bootcamp in Amsterdam: April 20th-21st.

• Ariel Elperin from StarkWare will be a speaker at The Secureum TrustX, a first-of-its-kind Ethereum security event in collaboration with EFDevconnect, in Amsterdam, April 21st-22nd.

• First ever StarkNet hackathon: April 25-26, Amsterdam. Registrations now open. 0xjanek and jniset from Argent, as well as guiltygyoza and Francesco Ceccon will be there, mentoring hackers and sharing their input!

• Ohad Barta will be the first speaker at L2Beat’s L2 conference in Amsterdam. Ohad's lecture will cover how L2s in general, and StarkNet in particular, create a new paradigm when developing dApps for blockchains.

• StarkNet Summit: TBD

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Please note that, in order to keep this newsletter at an acceptable length, I am purging the sections “Useful links and articles” and “Developer resources” on a biweekly basis. Thus they are divided into the sections “past week” and “this week”. You can check out all of the past updates here.

None of the content of this newsletter is financial advice. Always do your own research.

Thank you for reading, and see you next week. ⏳

Special thanks to odin_free and starkwhale for helping me source some of the information! 🔍